Recently in Politics Category
Major League baseball's free agent-signing season began today, with
the Yankees making a monster offer to the Milwaukee Brewers' pitcher C.
C. Sabathia. They're apparently also planning big offers to free-agent
pitchers Derek Lowe and A.J. Burnett. The Mets are going to be more
conservative with their money this off-season, but they're still hoping
to be able to find some free-agent help for the bullpen and the
outfield.
This year, however, I'll also be watching as another team takes shape: the Presidential Team. How nice -- and how strange -- to be following the rumors about Cabinet posts with the same intensity that I follow the rumors about baseball signings and trades. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Bill Richardson? They both seem like good choices to me, but I think that if Clinton would agree to do it, we'd have the strongest sign yet that it isn't going to be politics as usual in Washington starting January 20. (And I always thought that the triumph of liberal politics in The West Wing was such wishful thinking, particularly the last season with a young minority candidate winning the presidency and then choosing his rival to be Secretary of State.)
And what a change to be looking forward to Inauguration Day! It feels like the beginning of a new millennium. Too bad about the eight-year delay.
This year, however, I'll also be watching as another team takes shape: the Presidential Team. How nice -- and how strange -- to be following the rumors about Cabinet posts with the same intensity that I follow the rumors about baseball signings and trades. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Bill Richardson? They both seem like good choices to me, but I think that if Clinton would agree to do it, we'd have the strongest sign yet that it isn't going to be politics as usual in Washington starting January 20. (And I always thought that the triumph of liberal politics in The West Wing was such wishful thinking, particularly the last season with a young minority candidate winning the presidency and then choosing his rival to be Secretary of State.)
And what a change to be looking forward to Inauguration Day! It feels like the beginning of a new millennium. Too bad about the eight-year delay.
It's election day, arguably the most important election of my voting life. I'm going to be updating this post in the course of the day.
7:05 a.m.
We're in line to vote. Lucky for us, the polling place is just in our the back of the first floor of our residence hall. Things are a little bit more chaotic this year than in the past, and when we get there, we hear raised voices complaining about the way the line is being run. Three different districts are voting in our building, and the poll coordinator isn't sure whether to have there lines or one, and if there is one, at which point to divide it into three . . . The workers at the table haven't gotten their system down either: there are two different sign-in books, and they're passing it around rather assigning one to each of the two people there to check in names.
Behind us, a middle-aged African American woman is there with a boy whom I presume to be her grandson. He's about 15, and he's still half-asleep. But he's being good-natured. At one point, the grandma cups his face in her hands and says, voice breaking a little, "Honey, we're making history today."
Some of the undergrads in line are hoping to get "I've Voted" stickers, but they're going to be disappointed.
7:40 a.m.
Our neighbor, who teaches Early Childhood Ed at NYU's Steinhardt School, comes out shaking her head. She tells us that we're seeing the fruits of our educational system in the way that the polling place is working, a case study in problems of literacy and organization.
7:52 a.m.
My younger son is in the 1960s-era voting booth with me, and he helps me pull the lever for Barack Obama. We pull the red lever back to record the vote. We have just made history, voting for an African American man for the presidency of the United States.
There's definitely a buzz in the air that I haven't seen in past elections.
8:15 a.m.
So apparently Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, which is traditionally the first place to vote in the country, opening its polls at 12:01 a.m. on election day, has voted to elect Barack Obama, 15-6. (The town has 75 residents and 21 registered voters). Nate writes that Dixville Notch is never regarded as a predictor of anything, but it has gone Republican in several recent presidential elections: 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. But, as Nate points out, "you'd rather be up 15-6 than down, wouldn't you?"
4:30 p.m.
Off to pick up my younger son and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. My wife, via text message, is willing to admit that we might need a bottle of champagne later tonight.
7:03 p.m.
Polls have closed in several states, and Kentucky has been called for McCain, Vermont for Obama. No surprises here. No calls yet for Indiana, Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina. McCain currently slightly ahead in Indiana ... whoops, Mark Warner has been predicted to win in Virginia, a Democratic pickup. A very good sign!
7:13 p.m.
Obama up 50-49% in Indiana with 7% reporting. My mother-in-law must be psyched. She lives in Lafayette, has been a diehard Obama supporter from the moment he became a national politician, and has been been canvassing for Obama all fall. She's currently somewhere outside Grant Park in Chicago.
8:20 p.m.
I've been explaining how the elections work -- voting, electoral college, polling, predictions, calling states -- to my older son all evening, and he's become very invested in the whole thing. He.s watching the returns as if it were a sporting event and is protesting mightily that he has to go to bed before the polls close in New York.
After the 8:00 p.m. closings, the projected electoral count on CNN is Obama 77, McCain 34, with no upsets yet. But as they break down the numbers in Indiana and Florida, it seems that McCain is doing worse than Bush did four years ago almost across the board. More good signs for Obama.
8:27 p.m.
CNN is being conservative, but MSNBC has called both Pennsylvania and New Hampshire for Obama, giving him 103. Over at fivethirtyeight, Nate says that the speed with which the AP called New Hampshire is "the best evidence yet that Obama is about to become the next president."
8:40 p.m.
CNN is now calling Pennsylvania for Obama. Holding onto the state is huge for Obama, because McCain spent a lot of time and money trying to turn it red. I can feel the momentum building ... There's a huge cheering crowd over in Times Square watching CNN's coverage on a big screen ...
On the other hand, Obama hasn't flipped a red state yet ...
9:00 p.m.
More poll closings: New Yrok, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Michigan -- and Minnesota to Obama! Go Al Franken! Meanwhile, my wife tells me that my mother-in-law has been an Obanma supporter since he was a state senator. CNN's count: Obama 174, McCain 49. But still no red state flipped.
9:11 p.m.
Sitting downstairs now in the Commons of our residence hall, where the mood is boisterous. The pizza that arrived at 8:00 p.m. was devoured in five minutes, I'm told.
9:34 p.m.
A huge cheer here as CNN ()which is what we have up on the big screen here) calls Ohio for Obama. MSNBC had called it earlier, and now they're calling New Mexico.Looking at the electoral map before Ohio was called, my neighbor, the philosopher from Hofstra, said, "It's like Monopoly: houses are fine, but I want a hotel!" A big red hotel that we can paint blue!
9:50 p.m.
Back upstairs. My fellow Faculty Fellows and I have done the math: if CNN's projections so far are right, which have Obama at 199, then it's done: California, Oregon, and Washington
account for 73, getting Obama to 272, two more than he needs. But that won't be all, it seems . . .
10:00
Iowa! For Obama! I wonder if they know more about some of the states they're not calling as a courtesy to the Western states. John King of CNN is asking what they (at CNN) do when Obama gets to 270 (presumably soon), and now he's arguing that how many electoral votes he gets will be important in terms of governing. They're doing their best to make this seem like a drama. But the handwriting, as they say, is on the wall.
We figure we'll save the champagne for one more hour , , ,
10:24 p.m.
CNN keeps calling states for McCain -- Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi -- but they're also reporting that two "senior McCain aides" so "no path to victory given the results so far."
They're right about the final electoral tally and the percentage of the popular vote making a difference. I keep clicking on various online electoral maps to see how the races in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida are going. I want Obama to run up the score.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to finish preparing for my second lecture on Hamlet , but it's a late hard to concentrate on the Dane right now. Though it strikes me that there is something Shakespearean about John McCain's fall from grace this year.
10:59 p.m.
Virginia called for Obama! Virginia!
11:00 p.m.
All the polls in the continental USA have closed. CNN is projecting that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. I can hear screaming outside my windows, screams of joy! The wife is weeping.
I have a new title for my book: Joy in Mudville! Baseball and Politics from Bush to Barack.
11:20 p.m.
McCain is giving a very gracious concession speech. Maybe David Brooks is right about the "real" John McCain; too bad we didn't see him very often during the campaign. If only the Republicans had nominated him in 2000.
11:35 p.m.
We've switched to CSPAN. We've tired of the talking heads and just want to see the happy people.
11:35 p.m.
Barack to the world: "A new dawn of American leadership is at hand."
7:05 a.m.
We're in line to vote. Lucky for us, the polling place is just in our the back of the first floor of our residence hall. Things are a little bit more chaotic this year than in the past, and when we get there, we hear raised voices complaining about the way the line is being run. Three different districts are voting in our building, and the poll coordinator isn't sure whether to have there lines or one, and if there is one, at which point to divide it into three . . . The workers at the table haven't gotten their system down either: there are two different sign-in books, and they're passing it around rather assigning one to each of the two people there to check in names.
Behind us, a middle-aged African American woman is there with a boy whom I presume to be her grandson. He's about 15, and he's still half-asleep. But he's being good-natured. At one point, the grandma cups his face in her hands and says, voice breaking a little, "Honey, we're making history today."
Some of the undergrads in line are hoping to get "I've Voted" stickers, but they're going to be disappointed.
7:40 a.m.
Our neighbor, who teaches Early Childhood Ed at NYU's Steinhardt School, comes out shaking her head. She tells us that we're seeing the fruits of our educational system in the way that the polling place is working, a case study in problems of literacy and organization.
7:52 a.m.
My younger son is in the 1960s-era voting booth with me, and he helps me pull the lever for Barack Obama. We pull the red lever back to record the vote. We have just made history, voting for an African American man for the presidency of the United States.
There's definitely a buzz in the air that I haven't seen in past elections.
8:15 a.m.
So apparently Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, which is traditionally the first place to vote in the country, opening its polls at 12:01 a.m. on election day, has voted to elect Barack Obama, 15-6. (The town has 75 residents and 21 registered voters). Nate writes that Dixville Notch is never regarded as a predictor of anything, but it has gone Republican in several recent presidential elections: 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. But, as Nate points out, "you'd rather be up 15-6 than down, wouldn't you?"
4:30 p.m.
Off to pick up my younger son and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. My wife, via text message, is willing to admit that we might need a bottle of champagne later tonight.
7:03 p.m.
Polls have closed in several states, and Kentucky has been called for McCain, Vermont for Obama. No surprises here. No calls yet for Indiana, Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina. McCain currently slightly ahead in Indiana ... whoops, Mark Warner has been predicted to win in Virginia, a Democratic pickup. A very good sign!
7:13 p.m.
Obama up 50-49% in Indiana with 7% reporting. My mother-in-law must be psyched. She lives in Lafayette, has been a diehard Obama supporter from the moment he became a national politician, and has been been canvassing for Obama all fall. She's currently somewhere outside Grant Park in Chicago.
8:20 p.m.
I've been explaining how the elections work -- voting, electoral college, polling, predictions, calling states -- to my older son all evening, and he's become very invested in the whole thing. He.s watching the returns as if it were a sporting event and is protesting mightily that he has to go to bed before the polls close in New York.
After the 8:00 p.m. closings, the projected electoral count on CNN is Obama 77, McCain 34, with no upsets yet. But as they break down the numbers in Indiana and Florida, it seems that McCain is doing worse than Bush did four years ago almost across the board. More good signs for Obama.
8:27 p.m.
CNN is being conservative, but MSNBC has called both Pennsylvania and New Hampshire for Obama, giving him 103. Over at fivethirtyeight, Nate says that the speed with which the AP called New Hampshire is "the best evidence yet that Obama is about to become the next president."
8:40 p.m.
CNN is now calling Pennsylvania for Obama. Holding onto the state is huge for Obama, because McCain spent a lot of time and money trying to turn it red. I can feel the momentum building ... There's a huge cheering crowd over in Times Square watching CNN's coverage on a big screen ...
On the other hand, Obama hasn't flipped a red state yet ...
9:00 p.m.
More poll closings: New Yrok, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Michigan -- and Minnesota to Obama! Go Al Franken! Meanwhile, my wife tells me that my mother-in-law has been an Obanma supporter since he was a state senator. CNN's count: Obama 174, McCain 49. But still no red state flipped.
9:11 p.m.
Sitting downstairs now in the Commons of our residence hall, where the mood is boisterous. The pizza that arrived at 8:00 p.m. was devoured in five minutes, I'm told.
9:34 p.m.
A huge cheer here as CNN ()which is what we have up on the big screen here) calls Ohio for Obama. MSNBC had called it earlier, and now they're calling New Mexico.Looking at the electoral map before Ohio was called, my neighbor, the philosopher from Hofstra, said, "It's like Monopoly: houses are fine, but I want a hotel!" A big red hotel that we can paint blue!
9:50 p.m.
Back upstairs. My fellow Faculty Fellows and I have done the math: if CNN's projections so far are right, which have Obama at 199, then it's done: California, Oregon, and Washington
account for 73, getting Obama to 272, two more than he needs. But that won't be all, it seems . . .
10:00
Iowa! For Obama! I wonder if they know more about some of the states they're not calling as a courtesy to the Western states. John King of CNN is asking what they (at CNN) do when Obama gets to 270 (presumably soon), and now he's arguing that how many electoral votes he gets will be important in terms of governing. They're doing their best to make this seem like a drama. But the handwriting, as they say, is on the wall.
We figure we'll save the champagne for one more hour , , ,
10:24 p.m.
CNN keeps calling states for McCain -- Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi -- but they're also reporting that two "senior McCain aides" so "no path to victory given the results so far."
They're right about the final electoral tally and the percentage of the popular vote making a difference. I keep clicking on various online electoral maps to see how the races in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida are going. I want Obama to run up the score.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to finish preparing for my second lecture on Hamlet , but it's a late hard to concentrate on the Dane right now. Though it strikes me that there is something Shakespearean about John McCain's fall from grace this year.
10:59 p.m.
Virginia called for Obama! Virginia!
11:00 p.m.
All the polls in the continental USA have closed. CNN is projecting that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. I can hear screaming outside my windows, screams of joy! The wife is weeping.
I have a new title for my book: Joy in Mudville! Baseball and Politics from Bush to Barack.
11:20 p.m.
McCain is giving a very gracious concession speech. Maybe David Brooks is right about the "real" John McCain; too bad we didn't see him very often during the campaign. If only the Republicans had nominated him in 2000.
11:35 p.m.
We've switched to CSPAN. We've tired of the talking heads and just want to see the happy people.
11:35 p.m.
Barack to the world: "A new dawn of American leadership is at hand."
As I turn in for the night, it's after midnight and already, technically, election day. Nate Silver writes that "the national polling picture has cleared up considerably. Barack Obama
is on the verge of a victory, perhaps a decisive victory, in the race
for the White House." And he notes that, according to his models, "McCain's chances of victory are estimated at 1.9 percent, their lowest total of the year."Back in June, I wrote, "My wife would say I'm jinxing it, but if I had to put down a bet, I'd bet on Obama in a near-landslide come November."
I'm hoping that, twenty-four hours from now, I turn out to be wrong, that it's an actual landslide for Obama. That seems unlikely at the moment, but Nate points out that there are "many reasons to think that the polls are understating Obama's support, because of such factors as the cellphone problem, his superior groundgame operation, and the substantial lead that he has built up among early voters."
Hope. I go to bed with hope. And later on today, as is our custom, one of our sons will accompany me to the voting both and help me pull the levers.
As I wrote in my post "Thanks Again, Sarah," I spent some time during a lecture in my Conversations of the West class earlier this term discussing John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity," which draws on the Sermon on the Mount to describe the Puritans in America as a "city on a hill" that should serve as a model for all Christian communities. The sermon, I argued, tries to harness the energies of individualism, but subordinates them to a sense of communal mission. At the close of the lecture, I talked about Ronald Reagan's appropriation of Winthrop's appropriation of Matthew's figure of the city on the hill. For Reagan, Winthrop became "an early freedom man," a rugged individualist whom Reagan could recruit to support his idea that the Republican Party must rejuvenate itself by becoming the "party of the individual."
Reagan, in short, appropriated and reframed Winthrop's message. "No greater challenge faces our society today," he told the Conservaitve Union in 1977, "than insuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. . . . Then with God's help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us."
Reagan has been invoked repeated this year by the McCain-Palin campaign. And now, an old college friend tells me, he's being invoked by supporters of Obama and Biden. Or rather, he's being appropriated and reframed.
Here's an ad that's running this weekend in Ohio and Florida. It's brilliant.
Always on the lookout for connections between baseball and politics, I was happy to see Jon Stewart mocking both the Obama and McCain campaigns for pandering to baseball fans. The most fair-weather of these fair-weather fans turns out to be . . . well, Sarah, of course.
Watch and laugh (or weep):
Could you tell that Jon is a Mets fan?
Watch and laugh (or weep):
Could you tell that Jon is a Mets fan?
I've just started reading Simon Schama's latest book, The American Future: A History, which arrived today from amazon.co.uk. I got interested in the book when a friend sent me this a link to a review of the book by Niall Ferguson in the Financial Times.The book seems to offer an argument for American exceptionalism, contending that the "American difference" lies in part in the nation's ability to renew itself in moments of calamity -- such as the present moment. Indeed, Schama begins the book by identifying Barack Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses last January as the moment "when American democracy came back from the dead."
The book was just published in the U.K. by the Bodley Head, but for reasons that I have yet to determine, it will not be published by Ecco in the United States until May 19, 2009 (or so amazon.com informs me). Is Schama planning to revise the book for the American edition based on the results of the presidential election? Was it published earlier in the U.K. to give puzzled Britons a sense of what's going in in this year's wacky race? And why is the Canadian edition slated for release in late December?
If you've been reading my recent posts, you know that I agree with Schama about the promise that Obama represents, and I'm hoping that the book will be helpful to me as I do work on a new revision of my "Bush-League America" manuscript, which I'm trying to "secularize" as they say in the book trade (i.e. make suitable for a "general" reader). The new working title, courtesy of my wife: "Whose Game Is It Anyway?: Baseball and Politics from Bush to Barack." Should the unthinkable happen on November 4, I'll keep the old title but add a new subtitle: "A Baseball Fan's Lament."
Meanwhile, a review in the Economist offers this caveat about Schama's book: "One final note of caution: do not be deceived by the words on the dust jacket. Although the book's publishers are obviously keen to cash in on the presidential election, and despite the fact that Mr Schama leads off with a little hymn of praise to Mr Obama's ability to bring American democracy 'back from the dead,' this book really is not about the contest in November or what might come after it. What it is, however, is a fabulous jumble-sale, full of old treasures and recent acquisitions. Anyone interested in America will find in it something to their fancy."
I'll report my own findings at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, if you want to read it yourself, use the amazon.co.uk link above.
The owner of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, Ed Snider, a prominent supporter of John McCain's presidential campaign, arranged for Sarah Palin to drop the ceremonial first puck at the Flyers' home opener tonight, providing yet another reason for me to despise the Flyers.
I started watching the Rangers in 1973, discovering them while flipping through cable stations one rainy Saturday afternoon. 1973 has been on my mind this week: it happens to be the year to which Detective Sam Tyler is transported in the new series Life on Mars, which premiered last Thursday and which has been the subject of a couple of posts over at ahistoryofnewyork.com. But 1973 was also the year that the Philadelphia Flyers reinvented themselves as the "Broad Street Bullies" and went from a laughable expansion team to Stanley Cup champions in only seven years. The way they did it -- through intimidation, brawling, and racking up penalty minutes -- seemed to me a disgrace. What drew me to ice hockey was the grace and flow of the game when played by teams like the Montreal Canadians, whose nickname was "the Flying Frenchmen" or players like the Rangers' "GAG" ("Goal-a-Game") line of Jean Ratelle, Rod Gilbert, and Vic Hadfield, who were going strong when I started watching the team. During that period the best hockey in the world might have been played in the Soviet Union: the great Soviet teams won nine gold medals at the Olympics from 1956-1988 (with the "Unified Team" of former Soviet nations winning another in 1992).
Professional hockey has always been fourth in popularity among the major U.S. team sports, after football, baseball, and basketball. Back then it's because it was perceived as the Canadian national game, and the ranks of the National Hockey League were almost exclusively filled with Canadians. The 1973-74 Rangers were exclusively Canadian (one player, Walt Tkaczuk, was born in Germany but grew up South Porcupine, Ontario). Cultural diversity in the NHL meant having French Canadians and English Canadians on the same team. The fact that sports highlight shows tended to emphasize the on-ice fighting rather than the goals added to the air of provinciality that surrounded the sport.
And then hockey in North America began to change with an influx of U.S. players and players from Europe and Russia. As part of the first influx of European players into the NHL, two Swedish players, Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson, joined the Rangers in 1978 after starring for a couple of years in the now-defunct World Hockey Association. Later, when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, the team was mostly Canadian but had two Americans, four Russians, and a Finn. This year's edition of the Rangers features 8 Canadians, 7 Americans (including two from Alaska, named Gomez and Dubinsky), 3 Swedes, 2 Czechs, 1 Russian, 1 Ukrainian, and 1 Finn. The Europeans and Russians have changed the game, made it more about skill and less about fighting and grinding physical play. Hockey writers regularly point to the Olympic tournament (which has features the larger ice surface used in international play, which favors skilled players because of the increased skating room) as the time when the best hockey in the world is played. Hockey is still not racially diverse, but it is the most cosmopolitan of the major team sports in North America. And the NHL is reaching out to European fans. This year the Rangers opened their NHL season in Prague, winning two games against the Tampa Bay Lightning that count in the regular-season standings.
Palin, however, makes hockey into a bush-league sport, where "bush-league" denotes a perspective that "is anti-urban and anti-modern, provincial and nationalistic," as I put it a couple of years ago in a post here called "Bush-League America." George W. Bush adopts a bush-league perspective as a badge of honor, and he invokes baseball as if it were a modern-day link to some authentic, pre-urban American past, where fathers and sons played catch, and life was simpler. His convention biography four years ago was called "The Pitch," referring to the ceremonial first pitch that he threw at Yankee Stadium in the aftermath of 9/11.
Amazingly, Sarah Palin is more bush-league than Bush, and her self-description of herself as a "hockey mom" invokes hockey as if it, like Bush's version of baseball, were "anti-urban and anti-modern, provincial and nationalistic."
Not all Alaskans share that view, however. High-scoring center Scott Gomez, who hails from Alaska, plays hockey with European style and skill, and prides himself on being a Manhattanite, having bought a condo in Chelsea. While team members in the past often lived in the relative quiet of Westchester, quite a number of this year's Rangers apparently live in Manhattan.
Unlike Gomez and fellow Alaskan Ranger Brandon Dubinsky, Palin's son, Track, seems to have played a brand of hockey that was reminiscent of the old Broad Street Bullies. In a New York Times article about the Palins and hockey, a family friend was quoted as saying, "Track has a temper so sometimes you'd only see him half the game. Get there late and he'd already be out." Future Palin son-in-law Levi Johnston seems to take a similar approach to the game, but apparently he's less talented than Track was. According to the Times, "Mr. Johnston was considered a very good player, though not as good as Mr. Palin. He was tough, playing the last game of Wasilla High School's season in February, while a junior, with a cracked tibia. . . . In the end, hockey did not work for Levi Johnston. His grades slipped, he left school and he quit playing altogether."
So tonight Palin dropped that ceremonial first puck at the Wachovia Center. Many of the fans there booed her. Later she said, "As a proud hockey mom and an avid NHL fan, I was thrilled to be here. I enjoyed joining the Philadelphia Flyers to drop the puck at tonight's game. I wish them the best of luck this season."
The good luck charm didn't work. Five minutes into the game, the Rangers had jumped out to a 2-0 lead, which ballooned to 4-0 by the end of the first period. Perhaps due to fatigue (having played their home opener against the Chicago Blackhawks last night), the Rangers couldn't keep up the pace or the pressure of the first period, and the Flyers made a game of it, trailing by only a goal late in the third period. The Rangers, however, hung on for the victory.
Rangers commentator Al Trautwig started a heated discussion on MSG's post-game show (which featured former Ranger Ron Duguay, looking disturbingly like he could be part of the cast of Life on Mars; former New Jersey Devil Ken Daneyko; and former Islander Butch Goring) by echoing Larry Brooks of the New York Post: "What happened tonight before the Ranger-Philadelphia game was an absolute disgrace . . ."
Knowing where this was going, Duguay asked, "What happened, Al?" Trautwig continued, as a clip rolled, "They brought out vice-presidential candidate . . . " but was interrupted by Duguay saying, "Oh, look how hot she looks!" with Daneyko chiming in, "I'm a Sarah Palin fan!"
"Stop it, stop it! " Trautwig continued, "Just hear me out. What are two things that kill a good party? This is disrespectful to the Flyer fans and to the National Hockey League. Religion and politics. Let's say every fan who walks into this building has stated their love for the Philadelphia Flyers. Let's say it's 50-50, and the election is close. Now, they're presented with a vice-presidential candidate -- an almost endorsement by the Flyers -- and some are uncomfortable with that. Why should they be put in that position? Why not just put rabbis and priests at the door and say come over to our side?"
Daneyko replied, overlooking the fact that Flyers' owner Ed Snider is an avowed McCain booster: "The Philadelphia Flyers have that right, and I think people in this country are more intelligent than that to worry about whether Sarah Palin is dropping the puck or not. She's a celebrity nowadays. I know it's got nothing to do with the race, but it's up to the, you know . . ."
"But why would you want to do that," Trautwig asked, "to put a negative mojo into let's say half the arena, a third of the arena. Why would you want to do that on opening night?
"But Al," said Duguay, "All this is about entertainement. Hockey's entertainment. She's entertainment . . . " All too true, it seems, if descriptions of her recent appearances -- complete with smoke and lights, if not smoke and mirrors -- are any indication.
"To Democrat fans," Trautwig insisted, "she's not entertainment. " Goring, looking uncomfortable up to this point, finally says, "Al, I'm with you. Hockey's hockey. You don't bring politics. You don't bring religion . . ."
"She's a hockey mom," Daneyko interrupted. "It may sound simple, but I like that."
But, Duguay persisted, "How many times did we hear "hockey" this year in the last two months? Hockey, hockey, hockey. With Sarah Palin. That's a good thing."
I'm not so sure, Ron. Under commissioner Gary Bettman, hockey has worked hard to present itself as major-league rather than bush-league, to dissociate itself from the casual fan's belief that the game was all about the on-ice fighting.
Sarah Palin makes hockey seem bush-league. And that's bad for the game. She's already made John McCain seem bush-league, and if the current polls are any indication, that's going to be bad for him as well.
UPDATE: Apparently someone out there agrees with me: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15937237@N00/2930275180/
I started watching the Rangers in 1973, discovering them while flipping through cable stations one rainy Saturday afternoon. 1973 has been on my mind this week: it happens to be the year to which Detective Sam Tyler is transported in the new series Life on Mars, which premiered last Thursday and which has been the subject of a couple of posts over at ahistoryofnewyork.com. But 1973 was also the year that the Philadelphia Flyers reinvented themselves as the "Broad Street Bullies" and went from a laughable expansion team to Stanley Cup champions in only seven years. The way they did it -- through intimidation, brawling, and racking up penalty minutes -- seemed to me a disgrace. What drew me to ice hockey was the grace and flow of the game when played by teams like the Montreal Canadians, whose nickname was "the Flying Frenchmen" or players like the Rangers' "GAG" ("Goal-a-Game") line of Jean Ratelle, Rod Gilbert, and Vic Hadfield, who were going strong when I started watching the team. During that period the best hockey in the world might have been played in the Soviet Union: the great Soviet teams won nine gold medals at the Olympics from 1956-1988 (with the "Unified Team" of former Soviet nations winning another in 1992). Professional hockey has always been fourth in popularity among the major U.S. team sports, after football, baseball, and basketball. Back then it's because it was perceived as the Canadian national game, and the ranks of the National Hockey League were almost exclusively filled with Canadians. The 1973-74 Rangers were exclusively Canadian (one player, Walt Tkaczuk, was born in Germany but grew up South Porcupine, Ontario). Cultural diversity in the NHL meant having French Canadians and English Canadians on the same team. The fact that sports highlight shows tended to emphasize the on-ice fighting rather than the goals added to the air of provinciality that surrounded the sport.
And then hockey in North America began to change with an influx of U.S. players and players from Europe and Russia. As part of the first influx of European players into the NHL, two Swedish players, Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson, joined the Rangers in 1978 after starring for a couple of years in the now-defunct World Hockey Association. Later, when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, the team was mostly Canadian but had two Americans, four Russians, and a Finn. This year's edition of the Rangers features 8 Canadians, 7 Americans (including two from Alaska, named Gomez and Dubinsky), 3 Swedes, 2 Czechs, 1 Russian, 1 Ukrainian, and 1 Finn. The Europeans and Russians have changed the game, made it more about skill and less about fighting and grinding physical play. Hockey writers regularly point to the Olympic tournament (which has features the larger ice surface used in international play, which favors skilled players because of the increased skating room) as the time when the best hockey in the world is played. Hockey is still not racially diverse, but it is the most cosmopolitan of the major team sports in North America. And the NHL is reaching out to European fans. This year the Rangers opened their NHL season in Prague, winning two games against the Tampa Bay Lightning that count in the regular-season standings.
Palin, however, makes hockey into a bush-league sport, where "bush-league" denotes a perspective that "is anti-urban and anti-modern, provincial and nationalistic," as I put it a couple of years ago in a post here called "Bush-League America." George W. Bush adopts a bush-league perspective as a badge of honor, and he invokes baseball as if it were a modern-day link to some authentic, pre-urban American past, where fathers and sons played catch, and life was simpler. His convention biography four years ago was called "The Pitch," referring to the ceremonial first pitch that he threw at Yankee Stadium in the aftermath of 9/11.
"The Pitch": The Convention Biography of George W. Bush (2004)
Amazingly, Sarah Palin is more bush-league than Bush, and her self-description of herself as a "hockey mom" invokes hockey as if it, like Bush's version of baseball, were "anti-urban and anti-modern, provincial and nationalistic."
Not all Alaskans share that view, however. High-scoring center Scott Gomez, who hails from Alaska, plays hockey with European style and skill, and prides himself on being a Manhattanite, having bought a condo in Chelsea. While team members in the past often lived in the relative quiet of Westchester, quite a number of this year's Rangers apparently live in Manhattan.
Unlike Gomez and fellow Alaskan Ranger Brandon Dubinsky, Palin's son, Track, seems to have played a brand of hockey that was reminiscent of the old Broad Street Bullies. In a New York Times article about the Palins and hockey, a family friend was quoted as saying, "Track has a temper so sometimes you'd only see him half the game. Get there late and he'd already be out." Future Palin son-in-law Levi Johnston seems to take a similar approach to the game, but apparently he's less talented than Track was. According to the Times, "Mr. Johnston was considered a very good player, though not as good as Mr. Palin. He was tough, playing the last game of Wasilla High School's season in February, while a junior, with a cracked tibia. . . . In the end, hockey did not work for Levi Johnston. His grades slipped, he left school and he quit playing altogether."
So tonight Palin dropped that ceremonial first puck at the Wachovia Center. Many of the fans there booed her. Later she said, "As a proud hockey mom and an avid NHL fan, I was thrilled to be here. I enjoyed joining the Philadelphia Flyers to drop the puck at tonight's game. I wish them the best of luck this season."
The good luck charm didn't work. Five minutes into the game, the Rangers had jumped out to a 2-0 lead, which ballooned to 4-0 by the end of the first period. Perhaps due to fatigue (having played their home opener against the Chicago Blackhawks last night), the Rangers couldn't keep up the pace or the pressure of the first period, and the Flyers made a game of it, trailing by only a goal late in the third period. The Rangers, however, hung on for the victory.
Rangers commentator Al Trautwig started a heated discussion on MSG's post-game show (which featured former Ranger Ron Duguay, looking disturbingly like he could be part of the cast of Life on Mars; former New Jersey Devil Ken Daneyko; and former Islander Butch Goring) by echoing Larry Brooks of the New York Post: "What happened tonight before the Ranger-Philadelphia game was an absolute disgrace . . ."
Knowing where this was going, Duguay asked, "What happened, Al?" Trautwig continued, as a clip rolled, "They brought out vice-presidential candidate . . . " but was interrupted by Duguay saying, "Oh, look how hot she looks!" with Daneyko chiming in, "I'm a Sarah Palin fan!"
"Stop it, stop it! " Trautwig continued, "Just hear me out. What are two things that kill a good party? This is disrespectful to the Flyer fans and to the National Hockey League. Religion and politics. Let's say every fan who walks into this building has stated their love for the Philadelphia Flyers. Let's say it's 50-50, and the election is close. Now, they're presented with a vice-presidential candidate -- an almost endorsement by the Flyers -- and some are uncomfortable with that. Why should they be put in that position? Why not just put rabbis and priests at the door and say come over to our side?"
Daneyko replied, overlooking the fact that Flyers' owner Ed Snider is an avowed McCain booster: "The Philadelphia Flyers have that right, and I think people in this country are more intelligent than that to worry about whether Sarah Palin is dropping the puck or not. She's a celebrity nowadays. I know it's got nothing to do with the race, but it's up to the, you know . . ."
"But why would you want to do that," Trautwig asked, "to put a negative mojo into let's say half the arena, a third of the arena. Why would you want to do that on opening night?
Trautwig, Goring, Daneyko, and Duguay mix it up over Sarah Palin on MSG Network.
"But Al," said Duguay, "All this is about entertainement. Hockey's entertainment. She's entertainment . . . " All too true, it seems, if descriptions of her recent appearances -- complete with smoke and lights, if not smoke and mirrors -- are any indication.
"To Democrat fans," Trautwig insisted, "she's not entertainment. " Goring, looking uncomfortable up to this point, finally says, "Al, I'm with you. Hockey's hockey. You don't bring politics. You don't bring religion . . ."
"She's a hockey mom," Daneyko interrupted. "It may sound simple, but I like that."
But, Duguay persisted, "How many times did we hear "hockey" this year in the last two months? Hockey, hockey, hockey. With Sarah Palin. That's a good thing."
I'm not so sure, Ron. Under commissioner Gary Bettman, hockey has worked hard to present itself as major-league rather than bush-league, to dissociate itself from the casual fan's belief that the game was all about the on-ice fighting.
Sarah Palin makes hockey seem bush-league. And that's bad for the game. She's already made John McCain seem bush-league, and if the current polls are any indication, that's going to be bad for him as well.
UPDATE: Apparently someone out there agrees with me: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15937237@N00/2930275180/
I've already thanked Sarah Palin once on this site. In that instance, it was for giving Tina Fey such a wonderful character to play.
I'm indebted to her once again, this time for a remark that she made during last Thursday's vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden [click here to see a transcript.] I've already quoted the remark in my post "The Seagull": it's her reference to John Winthrop via Ronald Reagan:
I'll be opening tomorrow's lecture on on John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630) with a clip of Palin's remark, eventually circling back around to her inspiration, Ronald Reagan.
"A Model of Christian Charity" was delivered on board the ship Arbella on the eve of its reaching Massachusetts Bay. I prepared the way for Winthrop during last Wednesday's lecture by discussing, once again, the New Testament appropriation of the Old, exemplified by the relationship between these two passages:
I spent a little bit of time talking about Matthew's emphasis on Jesus' life as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, with particular reference to Isaiah 53, which was part of the class's assignment from Isaiah. I presented St. Paul (via Romans and 1 Corinthians) as a quasi-cosmopolitan thinker who offered the Gospel of Christ to both the Jews and the Gentiles: "[God] will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith" ("Romans 3.30-31). And I discussed the tension, in St. Paul's writing, between his emphasis on love and his emphasis on the Passion as the most important aspect of the Gospels. For Paul, it is love that explains the importance of the Passion: Jesus died because of God's and his love for humankind, but I asked the students to think about what it means to stress the way Christ died over the way he lived, the suffering over the teaching. In Paul's hands, it is compatible with a cosmopolitan message. In the Puritans' hands, it becomes something else.
I'd be willing to bet that Sarah Palin couldn't tell you who John Winthrop was, but she sure knows who Ronald Reagan was. And I'll end tomorrow's lecture with a brief discussion of Reagan's appropriation of Winthrop's appropriation of Matthew's image of the "city on a hill." I'll talk about the ways in which Winthrop puts community ahead of the individual and argue that the sermon is designed to harness individual energies for the good of the community. Reagan, however, reverses the message and transforms Winthrop into a spokesman for individualism. In a speech given to the Conservative Union in 1977, after Jimmy Carter won the White House, Reagan argued that the Republican party "must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than insuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society."
If the Republicans could manage to bring this about, Reagan concluded, "then with God's help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us." Indeed, Reagan goes further, transforming Winthrop into a rugged individualist: "What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free."
Tomorrow's lecture is, in part, about symbology: I'll discuss what the symbols that we associate with Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity tell us about the ways in whcih these religions present themselves both to believeres and to outsiders. And I'll close by showing how the meanings of symbol like the "city on a hill" shift as it circulates through history and culture.
Wednesday's playlist was: Santana (with Eric Clapton), "The Calling"; R.E.M., "It's The End of the World" (even though I didn't really get to Revelation); and (gotta love that Christian hard rock) Petra, "Onward Christian Soldiers."
Tomorrow's playlist is: Moby, "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters"; Loretta Lynn, "God Makes No Mistakes"; and two by U2, "In God's Country" and "God, Part 2.
And for you Tina Fey fans, here's the latest:
I'm indebted to her once again, this time for a remark that she made during last Thursday's vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden [click here to see a transcript.] I've already quoted the remark in my post "The Seagull": it's her reference to John Winthrop via Ronald Reagan:
But even more important is that world view that I share with John McCain. That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here. We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal.
I'll be opening tomorrow's lecture on on John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630) with a clip of Palin's remark, eventually circling back around to her inspiration, Ronald Reagan."A Model of Christian Charity" was delivered on board the ship Arbella on the eve of its reaching Massachusetts Bay. I prepared the way for Winthrop during last Wednesday's lecture by discussing, once again, the New Testament appropriation of the Old, exemplified by the relationship between these two passages:
Leviticus 24.19-20: "And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him: breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again."
Matthew: 5.38-39: "You have heard that it hath been said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth': but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
I spent a little bit of time talking about Matthew's emphasis on Jesus' life as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, with particular reference to Isaiah 53, which was part of the class's assignment from Isaiah. I presented St. Paul (via Romans and 1 Corinthians) as a quasi-cosmopolitan thinker who offered the Gospel of Christ to both the Jews and the Gentiles: "[God] will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith" ("Romans 3.30-31). And I discussed the tension, in St. Paul's writing, between his emphasis on love and his emphasis on the Passion as the most important aspect of the Gospels. For Paul, it is love that explains the importance of the Passion: Jesus died because of God's and his love for humankind, but I asked the students to think about what it means to stress the way Christ died over the way he lived, the suffering over the teaching. In Paul's hands, it is compatible with a cosmopolitan message. In the Puritans' hands, it becomes something else.
I'd be willing to bet that Sarah Palin couldn't tell you who John Winthrop was, but she sure knows who Ronald Reagan was. And I'll end tomorrow's lecture with a brief discussion of Reagan's appropriation of Winthrop's appropriation of Matthew's image of the "city on a hill." I'll talk about the ways in which Winthrop puts community ahead of the individual and argue that the sermon is designed to harness individual energies for the good of the community. Reagan, however, reverses the message and transforms Winthrop into a spokesman for individualism. In a speech given to the Conservative Union in 1977, after Jimmy Carter won the White House, Reagan argued that the Republican party "must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than insuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society."If the Republicans could manage to bring this about, Reagan concluded, "then with God's help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us." Indeed, Reagan goes further, transforming Winthrop into a rugged individualist: "What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free."
Tomorrow's lecture is, in part, about symbology: I'll discuss what the symbols that we associate with Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity tell us about the ways in whcih these religions present themselves both to believeres and to outsiders. And I'll close by showing how the meanings of symbol like the "city on a hill" shift as it circulates through history and culture.
Wednesday's playlist was: Santana (with Eric Clapton), "The Calling"; R.E.M., "It's The End of the World" (even though I didn't really get to Revelation); and (gotta love that Christian hard rock) Petra, "Onward Christian Soldiers."
Tomorrow's playlist is: Moby, "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters"; Loretta Lynn, "God Makes No Mistakes"; and two by U2, "In God's Country" and "God, Part 2.
And for you Tina Fey fans, here's the latest:
The polls show that the presidential election seems to be breaking in in favor of Chicago's Barack Obama, but this year's Chicago Cubs couldn't catch a break when it mattered. I'm still hoping to see Obama make history on November 4, but tonight I watched the Cubs make the wrong kind of history, extending their World Series drought to a full century by falling 3-1 to the Los Angeles Dodgers. In a match-up of former Yankees managers, Joe Torre bested Lou Piniella. The Cubs had taken the regular season series from the Dodgers, 5-2, but as we all know, the slate is wiped clean for the playoffs.
(Met fans know: we remember how the team stopped hitting in the 1986 postseason and were forced to eke out a win against the Red Sox through a series of improbable events, and we remember losing to the Dodgers two years later because of a pitching juggernaut named Orel Hershiser. The Dodgers, by the way, are going back to the NLCS for the first time in the 20 years since defeating the Mets in 1988.)
Meanwhile, it isn't looking too good for the White Sox either, who are down 2-0 to Tampa Bay. At least the Milwaukee Brewers salvaged a bit of midwestern pride by beating the Phillies tonight.
So it's time to shift gears once again: here's hoping for a World Series that Hank Steinbrenner will hate, with Joe Torre, Manny Ramirez, and the Dodgers meeting the Red Sox. The team from Boston now finds itself improbably up 2-0 over the Los Angeles Angels, owners of the best record in major League Baseball this year at 100-62. With game three later today in Boston and Josh Beckett on the mound, things are looking pretty good for the Sox.
Meanwhile, the Mets have done the right thing, signing manager Jerry Manuel to a two-year contract. General Manager Omar Minaya released a statement in which he said: "Jerry did a very good job taking over the club midseason, and we believe that he is the right person to manage our team and lead us to the postseason." I agree. Now, Omar, just get Jerry a decent bullpen, a reliable second baseman, and a right-handed bat for the middle of the line-up.
(Met fans know: we remember how the team stopped hitting in the 1986 postseason and were forced to eke out a win against the Red Sox through a series of improbable events, and we remember losing to the Dodgers two years later because of a pitching juggernaut named Orel Hershiser. The Dodgers, by the way, are going back to the NLCS for the first time in the 20 years since defeating the Mets in 1988.)
Meanwhile, it isn't looking too good for the White Sox either, who are down 2-0 to Tampa Bay. At least the Milwaukee Brewers salvaged a bit of midwestern pride by beating the Phillies tonight.
So it's time to shift gears once again: here's hoping for a World Series that Hank Steinbrenner will hate, with Joe Torre, Manny Ramirez, and the Dodgers meeting the Red Sox. The team from Boston now finds itself improbably up 2-0 over the Los Angeles Angels, owners of the best record in major League Baseball this year at 100-62. With game three later today in Boston and Josh Beckett on the mound, things are looking pretty good for the Sox.
Meanwhile, the Mets have done the right thing, signing manager Jerry Manuel to a two-year contract. General Manager Omar Minaya released a statement in which he said: "Jerry did a very good job taking over the club midseason, and we believe that he is the right person to manage our team and lead us to the postseason." I agree. Now, Omar, just get Jerry a decent bullpen, a reliable second baseman, and a right-handed bat for the middle of the line-up.
